


Of Fake Stories and Faker Smiles

by Althaeabuddy



Series: At the Very End [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, But it's a two parter soooo, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Not much shipping material in here, Spoilers through chapter 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 04:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14012118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Althaeabuddy/pseuds/Althaeabuddy
Summary: Kokichi remembers a story he read, when he was younger, about an ogre who pretended to be a villain to make his friend look better.It’s a silly thing, he decides, and it doesn't quite fit. Because he won’t just be playing villain anymore, not when everything is over.And nobody here considers him their friend and certainly nobody would cry if he disappeared.





	Of Fake Stories and Faker Smiles

**Author's Note:**

> Oops I forgot to add a description!  
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy this piece, Kokichi is a fascinating character and I feel like I'm still learning how to write him.
> 
> The story that's referenced here is a Japanese children's story called "The Red Oni who cried". Though I don't think "oni" translates directly to ogre but that's the best translation of it I could find.
> 
> Edit: Ooof I had a typo in the summary this whole time that's just embarrassing.

Kokichi doesn’t watch Gonta die.

Maybe that’s another thing he should feel bad about, but he can’t afford to watch, can’t risk losing himself any further.

He needs a moment. To breathe, to think. To piece his mask back together quickly enough to be convincing.

He’s made a mistake, he knows. Because he wasn’t supposed to care, not this much, anyway. Just a few tears that he could write off in a moment.

But Gonta, stupid, stupid Gonta, who would die—was dying—without ever knowing that he’d been betrayed,  had to go and say a bunch of stupid stuff about  forgiveness and being friends and whatnot.

How dumb. Like anyone would forgive him.

He tries to laugh, but only tears come.

 

He moves the three pictures to the left of his board, draws a line from Angie and Chabashira to Shinguji with crude sketches to go with it. A scythe, a plank of wood.

Kokichi sits back on his bed, tapping the marker against his chin. Two victims at once was unexpected. He’s running out of time. At this rate, everyone will end up as an x’d out face in a courtroom before he can plan anything substantial. That is, assuming he’s not included among those faces.

At least for now.

Tap. Tap. A limited number of students to work with. Gonta is useful, if only because he’s the only one left who’ll listen to Kokichi. Miu too, but she’s afraid, more afraid than ever, now, and fear is dangerous here.

Tap. He pulls out a notebook, a blank, new one this time. He’s gone through three now, but thankfully the warehouse stock is full enough to last for quite a while longer.

He uncaps a pen, a purple one this time, just to mix things up a bit. Redraws the most viable plans from notebook version 3.0, tweaks a couple that involved Angie’s cult.

None of his previous plans involved Chabashira or Shinguji, so that works out, at least.

He caps the pen and chucks it at the whiteboard. What kind of person judges people’s deaths in terms of their usefulness?

It doesn’t matter. He’s not a good enough liar to trick himself into thinking he’s a good person.

He doesn’t care about these people, these strangers, that much anyway.

 

People are stupid, Kokichi had decided. Though, he already knew that.

They’re oh so eager to start killing, and even if he wouldn’t trust a single person here, at least he’s not ready to jump right to murdering over assumptions and motives.

Akamatsu killed Amami, because that’s what Monokuma and the mastermind wanted. That’s what the game was about.

It could be a game, if Kokichi made it one. He liked games. He could deal with games.

And so he made it a game until Akamatsu’s name popped up on the voting screen and she cried and cried because she’d fallen right into the trap.

He cried a little too, until Saihara yelled at him to stop lying.

Then Akamatsu got crushed and splattered across the courtroom and then it wasn’t really a game anymore, not really.

And then Tojo, righteous Tojo who cared so much about her people and who fell into the trap just the same as Akamatsu, found herself a victim who was easy to kill, even if there could be no such thing in a game like this, not with 12 other lives to lose.

And Shinguji was…well, he would’ve probably killed regardless of the killing game, and Kokichi grits his teeth and stares down his stupid picture on the whiteboard. Good riddance. Even the assassin was better than that.

There are nine people now, and nine is pretty close to eight, which makes only half of their group left. And that’s including Kiibo.

Kokichi twirls his pen and scribbles another nonsensical invention to add to the pile.

 

In notebook version 4.0, he doodles the outside world. Even so, the drawing is crude and Kokichi doesn’t feel like confusing his future self with vague outlines, so he adds a skull and crossbones for good measure.

He probably doesn’t have to worry about confusing the meaning, though. He’s not forgetting that sight anytime soon.

He adds a frowny face with a comical teardrop.

It’s not real, he thinks. It conflicts with too many things he already knows. But even so, he can’t be sure.

He adds “Outside World” to a column marked with a question mark, alongside the motives videos and flashback lights.

He’s too tired to write more now, and so he falls backwards onto his bed and stares up at the ceiling. It’s a pretty boring ceiling, and the light fixture hurts his eyes. He could turn it off, but he’s gotten rid of the table lamp in favor of gathering more evidence and he would rather not be left in complete darkness at the moment. Not because he’s scared or anything stupid like that, he just has things to do and it would be inconvenient to fall asleep or something.

As for said evidence, he turns to the wax figure dangling upside down from his ceiling. It’s the newest addition to his evidence collection, and plus it’s an excellent decoration.

“Really ties the room together,” he says out loud to no one.

So he talks to Amami instead, because maybe the mastermind and their worthless audience will see with their little bug cameras and they’ll think he’s gone insane. Maybe he has, maybe seeing the outside world has destroyed whatever sanity he has left and pretty soon he’ll be hallucinating that Amami is talking back to him of something.

That doesn’t happen, so he has that going for him, at least.

“Tell me, Amami-chan, what did you know? What was your plan to end the killing game, huh?”

The wax figure doesn’t respond, and Kokichi pokes its forehead so that it sways back and forth.

“I guess it doesn’t matter, though, right? Because my beloved Amami-chan died before he could do anything. It’s so sad!”

Normally, this is the part where he’d summon up his best crocodile tears.

Instead, he laughs to himself, in the silence.

 

For half a second, his finger hovers over his own name and portrait displayed upon the screen.

Ridiculous.

For half a second, he considers that he just might lower his hands, sit back and let Monokuma do whatever he wants, but that’s even more ridiculous.

He clicks Gonta’s name quickly, before he can change his mind.

Momota, ever so predictable, votes for him anyway so it doesn’t matter, not really.

 

He’s missed something, Kokichi realizes, as he sits on his bed, pressing his motive video to his cheek for small bit of relief it provides him.

He’s not sure what it was, exactly, and that’s a problem, because he can’t afford to miss things, not here, not now.

The pad grows too warm to be of any use, and he removes it from his cheek with a growl. He’s tempted to just chuck the thing across the room, it shouldn’t hold any value to him, because it’s probably fake, as fake as everything in this hellhole is.

Instead, he sets it back on his bed gently.

Stupid. This whole thing is stupid. And it shouldn’t matter that Momota punched him, it’s not a big deal and he has a high enough pain tolerance to deal with it anyway. It shouldn’t matter, in fact, he should be happy that his plan has gone so well thus far. He shouldn’t be sitting here moping like he’s a child again. He shouldn’t be coming up with increasingly ridiculous lies to tell anyone who asks, because everyone saw him get punched. But he does anyway, because he knows how to spin a good lie that’ll piss off his classmates and teachers and the police until they forget what kind of questions they wanted to ask him in the first place. He’s good at nothing if not at making himself insufferable.

It’s stupid and it doesn’t matter and it’s probably fake too, his whole life is probably fake, just like everything else.

 

Gonta is stupid and naïve and way, way too trusting for a killing game. The only reason he’s lived this long, Kokichi’s certain, is his hulking size and that fact that he’s too gentle to hurt a fly. Quite literally, in fact, and that gets a chuckle out of Kokichi at least.

Gonta asks why he’s laughing and so Kokichi makes some slapped together story of him and his organization conquering a nation with only water balloons.

Gonta believes him, and that’s just boring, because Gonta will believe whatever stupid thing someone tells him.

He gets Gonta to laugh along a little too, but he can’t feel anything from it. Not when Gonta will be dead in just a few hours and if not, it’ll be him.

But he unleashes his fakest, cheekiest laugh anyway. It’s quiet out here in the snow too.

 

Luckily, it doesn’t take long for Kokichi to realize what he missed. Unluckily, it’s nothing good.

He removes Iruma’s picture from the whiteboard and slaps it in the empty white space in the center. She’s been demoted now, he decides, from potential ally to another threat.

Everyone’s a threat though, and he’d laugh at anyone who suggested that he’d trusted Iruma. She’s just like everyone else, all too ready to fall into the trap of the killing game. She’s lost.

He taps his pen to his chin with a little more force than necessary. If it’s not him, it’ll be someone else. If it’s not in the virtual world, it’ll be somewhere else, and maybe this time he won’t see it coming. Though he doubts Iruma is capable of subtlety.

Tap. Tap. Iruma’s already lost. She’s as good as dead.

He can’t die now. Not when he’s got a plan to execute. Not when he still has a chance of winning the killing game.

If Iruma can’t find the win condition, then that’s her fault.

He repeats his thoughts over and over until he almost believes them.

 

Kokichi remembers a story he read, when he was younger, about an ogre who pretended to be a villain to make his friend look better.

It’s a silly thing, he decides, and it doesn't quite fit. Because he won’t just be playing villain anymore, not when everything is over.

And nobody here considers him their friend and certainly nobody would cry if he disappeared.

Whatever. It’s just a children’s story. It doesn’t mean anything.

 

Monokuma agrees to transporting the motive to the virtual world, and Kokichi chalks that up as a small victory, because at least he knows that the flashback lights and the outside world can be tied together, and if one of them is fake then the other must be too.

It’s an important clue and he scribbles a dark purple line between the two in notebook version 4.0.

 

Everything goes as planned, but it’s still so, so wrong.

The first time he hears Gonta’s excuse, he’s almost impressed at how well the other can lie. He had half-expected Gonta to crack the moment they’d left the virtual world.

Kokichi gives him a wink and a nudge but Gonta keeps up his façade.

It doesn’t last though, and the more innocent Gonta acts the more uncomfortable Kokichi feels, which is ridiculous because this was his plan in the first place and Gonta was always a pawn, always and always.

Gonta doesn’t remember, which is an unfortunate mistake but it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything and in fact it’s probably useful because this way he can garner just a little more hatred from everyone else.

The only really stupid thing Gonta says is after the voting ends, that whole bunch of nonsense about friends and forgiveness and things that Kokichi will never have and doesn’t deserve anyway.

He cries—pretends to cry or maybe he pretends to pretend to cry—more and he must be doing it wrong because it’s pretty normal for his eyes to sting but less normal for his head  to hurt too and for his stomach to churn and churn until he’s nauseous or for his ears to ring.

 

He finishes planning his speech in time and it’s easy enough to get everyone to believe him. They’re all too preoccupied with mourning Gonta and worrying for Momota to care about him.

He pulls it off well, he thinks, or at least as well as he could have, given the circumstances. And maybe if he cackles loudly enough no one will hear his voice break and if he extends his arms like some sort of super villain in an anime then maybe he can disguise the shaking as a reflex.

It doesn’t matter, because they eat it up anyways and Saihara tells him that he’ll always be alone which is fine because it’s true and it’s what he wanted anyways so it doesn’t matter, Saihara can say whatever he wants.

 

When Kokichi was a little older, he read a western story about a little shepherd boy who lied and lied so many times to the townspeople until they didn’t believe him even when he told the truth.

He thinks that one’s more applicable to his situation, because at least the boy dies in the end.

Though if his truths are interpreted as lies, then that’s just more convenient for him.

It’s just another story. It’s not real and so it doesn’t matter.

The words he speaks of enjoying the others’ suffering echo in his head and he wonders if they’ve become the truth, and maybe he’s just the same now as the sick monsters watching them, assuming they even exist and the world isn’t a burnt out husk.

He decides to call it another lie, because the other alternative is too much, even for him.

 

A liar like him could spot his own kind without much difficulty, although he hasn’t quite figured out the mastermind yet, and that certainly has its perks.

It’s not as useful, he decides, when the lies he’s seeing through are his own.

 

From there, everything goes as expected, because the others are oh so predictable.

Because of course the other students would refuse his fake offer, and Harukawa strangling him again isn’t really that unexpected and besides, it’s at least something close to what Iruma must have felt and he can’t really claim he doesn’t deserve that.

He calls them his friends and takes off before they can yell at him for lying again.

 

He sticks Iruma’s picture on the left of the whiteboard and draws a line from it to Gonta. The marker squeaks and it’s too loud in the silent room. He scribbles a little toilet paper drawing next to it, and he wants to laugh at it because the concept of being killed by toilet paper is inherently funny but he’s too tired. Maybe in the morning he’ll think of a better joke.

He leaves the light on again, which turns out to be a problem because he’s pretty sure that Gonta’s haunted his picture on the board. Now they’ll need to hold a séance for him too, probably.

That should also be funny, but he’s too tired to laugh.

The Gonta picture’s eyes bore into him and so do Iruma’s and even Amami looks a little more judgmental than before.

He considers turning the board around, but decides that’s too stupid and also he’s way too tired to get out of bed, so he just tries to focus on the doodle of his face on the bottom of the board, and when that fails, he turns on his stomach and buries his face into his pillow.

Well, if he wasn’t insane before, he definitely is now, at that at least gets a laugh out of him, even if it sounds more like a sob with the pillow to muffle it.

 

Everything continues to go as expected and so Kokichi ends up in the exisal hanger with only Momota for company. He pilfers some food from the school store, opting to avoid the dining hall, and passes it to Momota through the bathroom door. Momota looks even worse than before and is in no shape to fight him, though Kokichi wouldn’t put it past him, he was undoubtedly the type to jump into a situation without thinking first and that was dangerous in its own right.

Yeah, Momota is definitely stupid, but he’s probably not the worse person to be stuck in a hanger with. Sure, he hates Kokichi, but there was nobody in this prison or even the world who didn’t anymore, so that was a null point.

The floor of the hanger is hard and cold, but it's preferable to his room and he didn’t plan on sleeping anyway, not when he could be brainstorming plans in notebook version 5.0, which is brand new and most importantly, didn’t include any information about his already- accomplished plan.

There’s plenty of things to take into account, and he has some ideas that need to be written down as fast as possible, he’s on a timer as much as Momota is, he has been from the moment he declared himself the mastermind, and it’s only a matter of time before the real one strikes back. There’s no stalemate in a killing game and he’s only buying time right now.

Yes, he needs to write down all his plans for all the potential outcomes he can think of right now and ignore the fact that the vast majority of them end in his death.

He doesn’t include any plans that involve him committing a murder, no, he’s already done enough of that.

 

Nothing goes as planned but this time it’s alright.

Getting the arrow yanked out of his back hurts and being dragged across the hanger floor hurts worse, but that’s alright because he can handle it and it’s probably not as bad as whatever Gonta had to go through anyway.

He’s not sure how much time he has left before he’ll become incapacitated, and so he frantically adds notes into the back of notebook version 5.0 in the neatest handwriting he can produce given the circumstances, and Momota watches him awkwardly but he doesn’t have time to focus on him.

Momota decides to make conversation anyways, which is annoying but he’s finished with what he needs to add and adjust that it’ll probably be okay, and even if it’s not, his arms are shaking far too much to write anything anyways by now.

“Hey, Ouma?”

“Hmm?”

Momota looks a little unsure of himself, which is unusual, but then again, this situation isn’t particularly usual either.

“Why’d you give me the antidote? I mean, I’m already…sick” he notably avoids the word “dying” “so wouldn’t it make more sense to um…take it yourself?”

Kokichi opens his mouth. There are plenty of answers he could give to Momota right now. That he doesn’t want to be responsible for the death of anymore people. Or that between the two of them, only one of them deserves to die such a brutal death, and it’s the one who killed two people.

Instead, he says. “So I could fool Harumaki, duh! And if I hadn’t taken the antidote from you, then you would’ve just taken it yourself, right?”

Momota opens his mouth, as if to object, but decides against it, for once. And that’s the end of that.

He needs Momota’s help to reach the press’s control panel and to set up the tripod and camera, but after that he can support himself with the handrail, even if his body is shaking horribly and the cold railing feels more like it’s scalding hot.

He pushes the button and tries not to think about just how slow the press moves and what it’ll look like when he’s been crushed and splattered all over the hanger. It doesn’t work and he’s sure that through the ringing in his ears and the whirring of the machine that he can hear the sound of bones crunching and organs splitting apart from the pressure, even if the press isn’t even close to Momota yet.

He manages to hit the button even as his arms fight against him which is good because if Momota died, everything would be pretty fucked.

Momota gets up from the press and he looks really pale, almost as pale as Kokichi probably looks, which is funny because he’s not the one dying. Well, he is dying, but he’s probably got a few more hours, at least. Hopefully, because if Momota dies before the trial, then everything is still pretty fucked.

He tries to smile, even though there’s nothing funny about the situation, only to find that he’s already smiling, and that his face is probably stuck like that, which feels like it’s some sort of irony, or maybe just karma. He’s not sure of the exact term, which is probably okay because his brain is slowly dying from the limited amount of oxygen he’s managed to choke down and it’s not really the best time to be thinking of the correct terminology.

He needs Momota to carry him to the press and to help him get his shirt and bandanna off, which he might have cracked a joke or two over if they were in a different situation and if he could open his mouth.

The hanger is horribly bright and at least being underneath the press spares him that agony. And Momota’s jacket protects him from the burning metal beneath his back.

He wonders if he can position himself in a way that would crush his skull first so he’d at least die quickly, but his spine has apparently chosen it’s the position it plans to take for the rest of his very short life and there’s no changing that.

Momota says something to him, but he can’t hear it. It’s probably something stupid anyway, because Momota is stupid.

He also tries to take Kokichi’s hand for some reason, but his hand is burning hot too and so Kokichi jerks away with a hiss, though he only manages to move his arm a couple of centimeters and make a strained choking sound.

And then Momota’s gone, off to send him to his death, which is okay, it’s definitely okay except it’s really not.

 Because there are so many other lies he could tell now.

That he’s fine with this, with dying alone here with a person who hates him as his only company.

That the shaking of his body is entirely due to the poison.

That he’s not afraid of dying.

But really, there’s no point in lying anym


End file.
